Sunday, January 18, 2015

Last week reports appeared in the media with the headline that 2014 was the warmest year on record, surpassing 2010 as the warmest year. I came across this article in the New York Times which covers the news with an angle on 'contrarians' and their insistence that global warming 'somehow stopped' in 1998. The paper then cites Stefan Rahmstorf, saying:

“Obviously, a single year, even if it is a record, cannot tell us much about climate trends,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, head of earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “However, the fact that the warmest years on record are 2014, 2010 and 2005 clearly indicates that global warming has not ‘stopped in 1998,’ as some like to falsely claim.”

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

The Oxford Dictionary (1993) defines lore as ‘A doctrine, a
precept; a creed, a religion.’Lore
includes, among other things, legends, oral history, beliefs and stories.It can be argued that climate-change ‘lore’ plays
a significant role in the formation of climate change policy in the German
Baltic coastal region and this has potential consequences for the science-policy
interface, leading from post-normal science to post-science policy
deliberations.

It should be noted that this is not the first case of lore intervening
in the German science-policy interface. The example of the German Kur demonstrates
how lore (perhaps combined with traditional knowledge but lacking in
demonstrated efficacy) has previously impacted on science and policy in
Germany.The Kur, although having its
origins long before the völkische Bewegung (which had its origins in the
Romatic nationalism of the 19th century), has no doubt been sustained by lorific
sentiments.According to Pietikäinen
(2000: 524) the völkische Bewegung was a loosely organized social movement that
was unified by ‘a cauldron of beliefs, fears and hopes’ often drawn from
romantics’ notions of folklore and the organic world.Life was to be lived in a mystical, lorific
relationship with the land. The Kur can be located within this context. The history
of the integration of the kur movement and alternative medicine into allopathic
medicine is well documented and suggests a template for the fate of the climate
change issue. Is this a template for defining the evolution of the issue of climate change in Germany?

Sustainable use of KLIMAZWIEBEL

The participants of KLIMAZWIEBEL are made of a diverse group of people interested in the climate issue; among them people, who consider the man-made climate change explanation as true, and others, who consider this explanation false. We have scientists and lay people; natural scientists and social scientists. People with different cultural and professional backgrounds. This is a unique resource for a relevant and inspiring discussion. This resource needs sustainable management by everybody. Therefore we ask to pay attention to these rules:

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